In the middle of 2020, Christine Rose, a speech-language pathologist at Saint Louis University, met the mother of one of her young clients, Jamie Saunders. Saunders’ daughter is a person who stutters, and when she turned 14 years old, Saunders began to worry about what would happen when her daughter turned 16 and began driving or traveling by herself.
What would happen if she were stopped by police or needed to state her name at TSA? This was the start of Rose’s work to help protect individuals with a verbal disability in Missouri.
“It really started as a passion project through Jamie because she was very concerned about when her daughter would start to drive,” Rose said. “A person who stutters can get these blocks or these repetitions, or sometimes they break eye contact just because they don’t want to see the listener’s reaction when they’re stuttering.”…